


Lux

by DaScribbla



Series: The Wicked Children [2]
Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Eventual!Polyamory, Femslash-centric, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:44:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5213282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They swore they'd never fall in love with another. Lucille begins to fear that they lied.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lux

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a what-if fic that turned into a glorified, twisted fix-it.

Death has been a visitor-turned-resident in their home for quite some time, its presence accepted and unquestioned. Morality has been abandoned in favor of survival, in favor of love. Thomas’s inventions don’t make sense to Lucille, but she admires their metallic power. During an autumn day, after Enola has been taken care of, Thomas kisses her softly and whispers that she is his inspiration. Part of Lucille wants to take this in her stride, part of her cannot believe it. But she has been Thomas’s hero for years. It’s understandable that he would idealize her.

It’s entrancing, the way that Thomas can take something in his hands and create something both beautiful and utile. She cannot do that -- her talent seems to lie in destroying things. 

But if it truly did, Thomas would not kiss her fingers so often, or listen to her play piano. 

They are true to each other. Lucille would know from a glance if Thomas had not been -- guilt shines like a beacon on his face -- and as for herself…

She could not imagine herself with another. 

 

It was supposed to be Eunice. Perhaps, if it had been Eunice, they would have been spared so much pain. They’d have done her quickly, too, simply to get some peace and quiet. But Eunice had family who would not have left alone. Edith was alone in the world, except for her father. And that could be easily rectified. 

Thomas meets her first and tells Lucille that she’s ideal. Wealthy, more or less independent, with a reputation for being strange. No one would be concerned if she were to disappear. 

From that description, she imagines a bony woman whose face is largely comprised of nose. Perhaps a squint. 

The creature who glides across the floor on Thomas’s arm is nothing like what she imagined. Small, delicate, golden hair that must be like a curtain when loose. 

Something breaks inside of her, and it is only the instincts left over from her childhood and her stay at the asylum that help her maintain her marble facade. Perhaps it is because she’s become so dependent on Thomas. None of the either wives were quite so… doll-like. Can she be blamed if she feels threatened?

 

Thomas is awake beside her. They never fall asleep until early in the morning. She hopes he cannot tell what she is thinking. It would break his heart if he thought that she didn’t trust him. He had made a promise many years ago that he would never love another, as had she. Thomas keep his word. He has been devoted to her, almost slavishly, all his life. 

 

Many hours later, after Thomas is finally asleep (she never sleeps until he does. She must be awake to fight the monsters), she creeps out of bed to pace a little, moving out of the bedroom so her brother will not be disturbed. 

Edith’s manuscript is lying on the desk nearby and she cannot tell if it is legitimate interest or simply the desire to see Edith fail in some way that makes her take a gas lamp, sit down, and begin it. 

Her harsh thoughts cease at the third page. 

She devours the entire book within the expanse of three hours. Even after the final line, she wants more and is ashamed. She wanted so desperately to have something to lord over her, to make Edith her equal. Instead, her manuscript is… beautiful. Chilling at times, sad at others, the occasional note of dry wit. Her heroine made a deadpan observation that had Lucille covering her mouth with her hand to fight a giggle. Guilt did not come until later, when she heard Thomas calling from the bedroom. Neither of them were good travelers, but Thomas always became stressed by it. His nightmares would come back in full force. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said softly, when Thomas asked where she had gone. “It’s alright. I’m here.”

She’d laughed while Thomas was in the grip of another horrible dream. 

Thomas was always the cause of her laughter. Always. 

How could she have been so cruel? It was as if this Edith, this sweet innocent, had reached into her throat and ripped the laugh from her. And she’d given it, wholeheartedly.

Back in bed, Thomas’s fingers play with the hem of her chemise and she covers his hands with her own, allowing him to weep as much as he needs. She weeps too, but not for his nightmare. Instead she sees the black, flourishing text behind her eyelids and feels herself inwardly collapse at the thought of what this mere girl -- this sacrificial lamb -- had caused. 

 

She seems more like a beacon than a lamb on the day they go walking. The sunlight catches her in exactly the right manner, setting her hair aflame and her dress and hat glowing the color of smooth butter. Her eyelashes are like golden strokes of paint against her skin. 

_I will lose him,_ she thinks to herself. _He may already be lost to me._ Out of the corner of her eye, she can see her brother reading the manuscript, eyes tracing over the lines she herself had blazed through just that morning. Then she turns her attention to the flock of feeble butterflies laying the grass before her. Edith sits silently beside her and when she finally gathers enough courage to look at her, she is struck anew by the delicacy of her features, of her movements. Lucille has never felt so inadequate before. Beside Edith, she feels like a crow baking in its dark feathers beneath the sun, or a moth fluttering beside a light. 

She hardly knows what they speak of, but she remembers bringing one of the weak insects to her cheek, her gloved hand brushing bare skin. Her heart races, like that of a mouse preyed upon by something much larger. 

She is empathetic almost to a fault sometimes. Now she can feel the bewilderment radiating from Edith in waves. The girl is confused by what she says and the soft caress of the butterfly’s wing. And underneath that… a kind of curiosity. 

She asks, “What do black moths eat?” and a last shred of defense makes Lucille tear her eyes away, back to the invisible carnage on the park ground.

“Butterflies,” she says, and sweeps away quickly, determined not to be ensnared any further by Edith’s blue, blue eyes. 

 

Her father insists on their leaving and it hurts far more than she’d like to admit. She doesn’t want to go just yet. Not until she has had the chance to speak with Edith again, as they did on the green. But what can be done? The situation cannot be salvaged. So she watches with her facade of cool indifference as Thomas breaks Edith’s heart and then stamps on the fragments. Edith is hurt -- she can see the tears brewing in her eyes, but there is anger too. An iron fury is building within that doll frame. Lucille recognizes the look from her asylum days. It is the anger of being humiliated. Thomas plays his part well, but it’s Edith that captures her attention. The ringing slap she gives him leaves a blazing red mark on Thomas’s cheek and Lucille feels her own palms itch for retaliation. Her brother has endured far worse in his life, but the principle remains. She would have him never feel pain again.

 

Cushing knows too much. Something must be done about that. 

They are married the next time she sees them. Seeing them both again -- Thomas tall and beautiful as usual, Edith glowing with all the happiness of a new bride. She has been startled by something in the corridor; no doubt it will take time for her to adjust to the house itself.

With Edith’s first sip of tea, Lucille looks on her as merely another wife. There for a few months at most, and then gone. 

With her second sip, a stab of regret pierces her. The thought of all that beauty fading is tormenting.

With her third sip, Lucille takes a hold of herself.

_Better that this end now. Before anything happens that we should regret._

Late that night, Thomas creeps upstairs to her bedroom. They love each other silently, biting into skin and pillows to keep their cries unheard. She wonders how it would look, her brother and Edith together. If she would blush or take control. Kissing his lips until they bruise. Lucille does not have that luxury, will not have it until Edith is dealt with.

She thinks of her, lying in bed alone with nothing but the creaks and groans of the old house to act as a lullaby.

She almost wants to go to her. But that would mean leaving Thomas alone upstairs. She never does that if she can help it. 

Morning. Her crueler side makes her show Edith the book with its hidden, lewd illustrations.

“But, of course, this could hardly shock you now.”

Edith is clearly bitter when she admits her virginity. She makes no mention of Thomas’ disappearance. 

Her beauty is like a knifepoint in Lucille’s heart as she leans against the piano, listening to her play. For a startling moment, she reminds her of Thomas. Light streams down from the huge windows above, dust particles floating in the air, and Edith seems to become something ethereal in that light. She is a creature of sunlight and silk. Lucille could not feel more inadequate. More bewildered by this young, bright thing. She is a butterfly, flitting about this glorified mausoleum. 

Their stares linger too long, and it is Edith who looks away first. Lucille should gain satisfaction from that, but all she feels the loss of the momentary warmth that she had not been aware she’d gained. 

 

Night comes and this time Lucille wonders what Edith’s lips feel like. The thought feels so natural. But she is weeping before they finish. Thomas is frightened; he does not understand what is wrong. And how can she explain this new fear? He is drifting from her and she... she feels like nothing and yet everything when Edith is near. 

They are roused by Edith’s screams. She has seen something in the hallway -- God only knows what she was doing there -- and is practically in hysterics. 

Thomas plays his role a little too well, holding her close and soothing her sobs. Lucille swallows her jealousy as best she can. Her own tears have barely dried. 

Looking at her with the earlier fantasy still fresh in her mind is nearly impossible. Instead she makes tea. At this rate, Edith’s time will be halved. 

Anything to end this quickly.

 Edith takes it quietly enough. She is still crying and Lucille is so distracted by the glass-like tears streaming down her face that she is barely aware of anything else. Refilling her cup, she only vaguely overhears her brother say something about the post office. 

 

They leave for town the next morning and almost immediately the snow begins to fall. As Lucille lies curled up on the couch in the library, book in hand, she watches the flurries fly past the windows. Already a sizable pile is collecting on the floor at the center of the main hall. Never warm, the house becomes colder than ever. Lucille retrieves a blanket from upstairs and wraps up, intent on finishing the book she’s read countless times before.

It’s not until after dinnertime that Lucille begins to worry. Town is far, so a little lateness is understandable. But this... Thomas and Edith left early. They should be back. They have to come back soon. Before night falls. She has slept alone here before but it has never been easy. And when Thomas is somewhere out there and she doesn’t know what has happened to him... how will she survive? 

The snow continues to fall, the sky now black. The stars have come out, tiny diamond pinpricks in the darkness. Lucille lies on her bed, staring at the dark ceiling, and screams. 

Rolls onto her side, continues to scream. Her voice is cracking into sobs. She is drowning in the darkness that spreads like plague through each room, throughout this house that is both her prison and her sanctuary. 

She must have Thomas beside her. Without him, she feels hollow and incomplete. Insecure. His arms must be there to hold her, as tightly as she holds him. 

The bedroom seems to constrict around her and her breath ceases -- she is back in her cell at the asylum with nothing but the prick of the laudanum needle to remind her that she exists. Her mind had floated along, carried by the path of countless dreams that flowed into each other. Dreams of Thomas, of home. 

Now, new dreams twist themselves and knot with the old. She dreams of Thomas’s reassuring presence at her side. Of clay seeping through the cracks of her bedroom floor and pouring into her mouth, filling her lungs. Of golden hair spilling onto the bed like a ray of sunlight. Hands threading with her own. But she can no longer tell whose they were, and her lack of certainty scares her. 

She cries herself into slumber and it is her nightmares that wake her. It is the only word she has for them. What else could they be? She had promised Thomas... she had promised him she’d be true forever. How can she dream so selfishly of his condemned bride? Or of the secret laugh that had risen from her -- the most delicious and yet mortifying feeling she’s experienced in years. 

 

She is wan and drained the next morning, when they return. The moment she sees Edith enter, the shame rises within her. That is unusual. Shame is not an emotion she experiences. It was burned from her long ago. But it does not last long. She can see the truth of what they have done glowing in Edith’s face and the envy rises like bile within her. How dare she feel so pleased? There was nothing in which to rejoice when she and Thomas first made love. They’d been terrified. How dare she smile so easily? Especially when she had taken Thomas from her. How could it have happened? Thomas sworn to her that he’d never love another. He’d _promised_ her. He’d never have broken his word, it was not in his nature.

“Do you know how worried I was?” she says finally, saving face at the last moment. Edith is startled by her earlier outburst, afraid even. Good.

_Let her see that I am not and have no intention of befriending her._

“Lucille?”

The sound of her name on her tongue startles her in return. Her heart pounding, she can hardly look up from where she spilled breakfast. 

“I’m sorry we scared you,” Edith says gently. She strips off her gloves and begins helping her scrape away the food she spilled. A hesitation. “Is there no one at all in your life?” she adds. 

_How quaint. She believes my anger has its root in my loneliness._

“This is my life,” Lucille murmurs, almost to herself. 

“That cannot be so.” Edith’s voice is soft but determined. “Surely there is someone who loves you. As much as I love Thomas.”

_I do. But you took him from me. You have ruined everything. You ignorant child. You beautiful fool._

“There is no one.”

Breakfast is thrown away, there is no alternative. Edith sits Lucille down by the fire. 

“I’ll make you a cup of tea,” she says and Lucille feels a jolt. “Some of that tea you told me was so good for you.” Her tone is innocent and unassuming. 

“I’m sure that will not be necessary,” she begins, but Edith won’t hear of it.

“Nonsense. It won’t take five minutes.”

Lucille’s eyes flick to the door, willing her brother to arrive and rescue her. But he is undoubtedly avoiding her. 

There is no escape. At least there is only a little, and the poison acts slowly. Lucille is sure to take small and few sips, which isn’t hard. She had no idea how bitter the tea really is and makes a mental note to add more sugar to Edith’s cup next time. 

A thought continues to nag at her and she in turn cannot leave it alone, like itching a scab. At long last, she gives it voice.

“Did you force him?” she asks. Her voice goes horribly quiet. There is no answer that Edith can give that will please her. 

The woman is shocked, understandably, but what Lucille is unprepared for is how she goes to her knees before her and takes her hand. There is concern in her blue eyes, and pity too, but Lucille wants none of it. Perhaps she can convince herself of that. 

“I would never hurt him that way,” she whispers. “Never.” She looks down at where their hands are linked -- _oh god_ , small fingers laced with her own, like the dream she’d had --- and squeezes. Lucille is ashamed of the comfort it brings and longs to rip her own heart from her chest. Better she should not feel anything than risk any further betrayal. But Edith’s hands are soft, and warm from making tea. She cannot pull away. She will not. “What kind of a life have you known? Both of you,” Edith adds. “You speak of your childhood and your lives before now only a little... but you-- you ask these things so desperately. I would never force him,” she says again. Lucille does not know whether to feel relieved or damned. 

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, feeling tears prick at her eyes. “I should not have asked. It was not -- my place --”

“Hush.” Edith shakes her head, smiling despite the obvious concern on her face. “You were... afraid. And while I do not pretend to understand you, I am always here to listen. Should you wish to speak.”

_And now she believes I asked because of a past incident. Why does she_ do _this?_

And true, there had been moments when she’d had cause to fear for Thomas. She does not dwell on herself. The past is the past, or so she tells herself. 

“Thank you,” she says shakily. There is silence as neither of them move. 

“Your tea is growing cold,” Edith points out, but Lucille merely smiles tightly and shakes her head. 

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not alone,” Edith says. “Thomas and I are here. And I’m sure that one day, very soon, you will meet someone of your own. Yes?”

Lucille smiles brokenly at her optimism. Her entire chest feels as if it has been smashed. 

“What makes you so certain?”

Edith shifts on her knees and gives her another smile that seems to blind her with its brilliance. 

“Well,” she says, “to begin with, you’re beautiful.” 

The word seems to startle them both, as if Edith hadn’t intended to use it. Lucille is shaking again as she gently turns over Edith’s hand, wrist to the ceiling. 

“You would call me that?” she asks and Edith nods after a moment. She is meeting her gaze completely. Those eyes -- deep blue, almost childish in their innocence. Lucille stares into them, wondering how her own appear. Whether it is because of some desire to take something of her own, or simply because she is lost in the irises of the woman kneeling before her, she finds her courage and makes her claim upon Edith’s lips. 

The first kiss is mere contact. If light has a taste, it is the taste of Edith.

The second is deeper. Lucille wonders if Thomas has ever dared kiss her like this. It doesn’t matter. Lucille is here now. She is being recognized. It is her turn, although for what she doesn’t quite know.

With their third, Edith brings up her other hand, is pulling down Lucille’s head, hungrily demanding her satisfaction. Their hands never unlink.

Lucille has been starved of affection all of her life. This new chance is laid before her -- she will drink it to the dregs. 

“Thomas,” Edith whispers as they come apart. “He is -- I should not.”

_Thomas_ , Lucille thinks and feels her world implode. 

_I should not._ She screams the words within her mind. _I should not, I cannot. This will betray him in every possible way._

“Do not leave me,” is all she says.

 

They wait with comparative patience until Thomas leaves the house to work with the builders on his machine. Edith sits in the library writing as, below, Lucille plays her piano, wooing her with Chopin and Mozart. 

And the engine begins outside. Edith puts down her fountain pen and stands, allows Lucille to take her hand. It is unclear who leads who, but it hardly matters. They walk with the same purpose, making for Edith’s bedroom with small, purposeful steps.

It is a cloudy and yet bright day, the snow outside a brilliant white. They let their own hair down -- Edith’s tumbles around her shoulders like waves of wheat and Lucille can hardly tear her eyes away -- and then each starts on the other’s clothes. Layer after layer of lace, satin, velvet, and silk comes drifting and slipping to the floor until both women stand there shivering in their chemises and corsets. Metal hooks are undone one by one, Edith’s breath is warm on her collarbone, her throat. Lucille can see that a fraction of her mind is already regretting this, but that fraction is being overruled and pushed away as whalebone slides to the floor and their last inches of distance are closed. 

The house breathes, and the roar of the engine goes on. The calls of the men outside persist. Lucille lies in her brother’s marriage bed, his bride between her legs, and thinks on symmetry and balance as she sighs. 

_You leave her bed cold in favor of warming mine. You warm a bed in town and abandon me here._

_I must make this right._

_I’m sorry._

They crawl beneath the heavy covers to stay warm. She can see the guilt rising within Edith as plainly as she feels it within herself. She promised Thomas. Why had she behaved with such abandon? She should have spoken to him first. Perhaps she has it wrong. Perhaps Edith _had_ forced him -- perhaps he is suffering even as she lies here, and it is misplaced guilt that keeps him from speaking to her. He had been forced, he _must_ have been. How could he ever have betrayed her otherwise? How could she have been so blind?

And now she lies all but naked beside the woman who -- the woman -- her brother’s -- she cannot not make herself think it. 

_But she swore so deeply that she’d never harm him..._ _and she is so beautiful, although that hardly matters._

She can hardly believe it of her. She cannot. 

It is damning however she looks at it. 

She looks so young lying there, her brow furrowed, her hair a mess of gold. She feels such guilt. The girl is quite in love with him, Lucille realizes, and does not know whether to laugh or weep at the thought. So she kisses the thought away. Kisses away Edith’s frown, till they are once again making love beneath the covers. Perhaps not love. Not if she believes the poets who tell her that love should be void of regret. But she has never experienced a love that does not bite her after its realization. 

They are dressed and presentable before Thomas comes back inside. All that remains of those scant two hours is the blush that colors Edith’s cheeks, and the trails of love bites that run over their bodies. They dress each other silently and put up their hair as neatly as before. The clothes strewn throughout the bedroom disappear. They are putting themselves together again, repainting their masks. Lucille knows too well what her own mask conceals -- Edith is a mystery. Lucille does not understand her at all. She understands Thomas. She and her brother know every inch of each other’s souls, as well as they know each other’s bodies. But Edith is a blank and Lucille cannot stand not knowing. 

Edith touches her cheek, a warm brush of fingers. The conflict flares up within her -- she is so lovely -- and Lucille drops her gaze and leaves the room. 

When she comes onto the staircase overlooking the library, she sees Thomas is standing there, one long and elegant hand tracing the piano’s ivory keys. Lucille feels a lump in her throat as she watches him silently from the stairs. He is sitting down now, carefully positioning his hands. And then he begins to play. It’s one of Mozart’s simpler minuets and the only piano he knows. She remembers teaching him it when he was seventeen, sitting beside him on the bench as they worked through the sheet music together. 

His tempo is off, he is halting, trying to remember, trying to make it perfect. 

_He feels as much regret as I do,_ she realizes. The piano was a kind of call, a plea for forgiveness. Perhaps even a prelude to their own few hours of love. A plea for her to let him into her bed again. 

And she longs to forgive him. There is no question that she will. He is all she has.

_Mercy killings_ , she thinks. That’s how she’d described their scheme to Thomas once. _Women with wealth and few living relatives. With nothing to live for._

_I am not so different. If Thomas were taken from me, it would be over. I would be alone._ _With this house. And its books. And its endless hallways. I would never escape._

_There is so little worth surviving for._

She takes a step forward, to go to him and finish the melody with him, but Edith is quicker. She moves softly down the stairs, picking up her skirts carefully to avoid any noise. They stand there listening until the final notes of piano die in the frigid air. Thomas sighs almost imperceptibly and stands. He looks up to see both the ladies of the house watching him -- Edith smiling, the significance of it all lost on her, Lucille at the top landing, frozen. 

She must say something. She feels she will die if she does not.

“You never told me you could play,” Edith says quietly, coming to him. 

“It’s all I _can_ play,” he murmurs.

“It’s beautiful.” Their kiss is tender and Lucille cannot bear to watch. She turns sharply, her skirt sweeping over the aging wood, and flees to her own bedroom as wind whistles through the building and the entire house respires. 

 

He is knocking softly on her door that night, but she refuses to let him in. What can they say to each other? Everything has gone wrong. Lucille would like push the girl down the stairs and damn the money but... there’s no way that she could do it now. She never intended this. Never.

“Lucille, please,” he says through the door. “Please, I must speak with you.”

She pauses in unlacing her corset. 

“What is there to say?”

_I cannot let you in. I cannot_ look _at you._

“Lucy...” his voice has become so timid. He has not called her Lucy in years. “Please. I’ve wanted to talk to you all day.” She climbs under the covers of her bed and tries to ignore the unwelcome chill it affords without the familiar heat of her brother’s body. 

“Go back to your wife, Thomas.”

“Lucy...”

The pillows are thick, and she turns her head to rest her cheek against the soft linen. It is a poor substitute for Thomas’s chest. 

“She’ll be missing you,” she said. “She’ll wake cold and alone. Sick. She’ll want you there. It was cruel of you to leave her in such a state.”

After a long pause, she heard Thomas sigh.

“Alright. Alright, I will.” 

She hears his footsteps retreat. In the old, echoing house, every sound is magnified. She can almost hear the sound of the door to their bedroom opening. Her imagination supplies the rest. His furtive crawling back into bed. Perhaps he wakes Edith, perhaps they embrace in the darkness. Perhaps Thomas’s hands go reaching beneath her nightdress to rediscover the part of her that Lucille had already found. Thomas reaching... and reaching with hands that might have done the same for Lucille herself, had she not been so cold. And Edith arches and shakes, just as she had earlier that day. And the night before, in the village. She loves with the freedom of a child and with little of its innocence. Lucille envies her that, just as she envies her her husband, her beauty, her happiness. 

Sitting there in the near-darkness, she finds herself listening for the sounds of their copulation. Anything really -- a stray word, a distant moan through the house’s aching walls. 

 

Thomas must notice the change between herself and Edith. Part of her wants to remain as aloof as before, but... her continued distance after all that had passed between them would hurt Edith. She does not want to hurt Edith. 

But still she spoons more poison into her tea, watches the girl grow weaker. They cannot abandon their plan. Not now.

 

Thomas goes upstairs the next night with more pleas for forgiveness only to find her gone. Meanwhile, Lucille slips into bed beside Edith, the linen sheets smooth against her legs. Her lips are on hers and the bedroom is no longer dark. Edith seems to shine with a light that is superhuman. Lucille is lost, drowning in the light that creeps within her, seeping through her skin wherever she feels Edith’s touch.

“Thomas...” Edith murmurs, and Lucille shakes her head, her mouth between the girl’s breasts. 

“I have locked the door.”

Edith frowns a little, but makes no attempt to change her mind or stop her. 

Light streams through the bedroom window, spilling in white and blue across the sheets, the heavy velvet blankets, setting Edith’s hair aglow. She has fallen asleep after their lovemaking, white as the bedclothes -- _she is so ill_ \-- and her small, delicate hands a hairsbreadth from Lucille’s own. And then she is woken by the force of her coughing. Brilliant white is stained a dark red. 

The next day, she begins reducing the amount of poison in Edith’s tea. She has lost the battle. The girl cannot die. 

 

If Thomas notices how the poison in the jar is barely depleting, he gives no sign of it. 

 

On the third night, Lucille hears him knocking on her bedroom door and rises to open it. When they kiss, it is long and desperate with the length of their time apart. She has never neglected him in such a way, and Thomas is confused. All that he desires is love, in whatever form. Lucille fears that she has been lacking in both her roles -- as sister and as lover. But she apologizes with her every breath.

“Promise you’ll never hurt me like that again,” Thomas says, holding both her hands as if warming them. 

“I will not,” she says. “I never wanted to hurt you. I just had to make you see.”

He nods, satisfied, and kisses her once again. 

“I’m so sorry, Lucille,” he says into her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to. She looked so lovely and she was so close... I wanted to touch her so badly. Just to know the feeling of it. You understand?”

_More than you know_ , Lucille thinks.

When she kneels on the bed between his legs and undoes his vest, he asks for her to sing to him. The lullaby is old, but old things have a kind of spell to them. The tension in his muscles eases. They are close again, the way they should be.

 

The girl is still sick, and she still sleepwalks. They find her late one night trying to get downstairs, her skin burning, her mind lost in a fever dream. Thomas swings her into his arms, cradling her to his chest as tenderly as he might a small bird with an injured wing. They both put her to bed and sit up with her -- Thomas stroking her hair, Lucille running a cool cloth over her brow to bring down her fever. 

The ordeal ends as the sun rises over the barren horizon. The blazing heat on her forehead breaks and then blue eyes open -- like the petals of a flower, Lucille thinks, and knows Thomas agrees -- and her voice out rasps in that accent Lucille had thought she’d never have a chance to grow fond of.

“That’s strange.”

“What’s strange, darling?” Thomas whispers. He takes her hand and Lucille feels a stab of the old jealousy within her. But it is drowned out by her relief that Edith is out of danger. 

“The house...” she murmurs. “I feel warm. I’m never warm, in the mornings here.”

They sit on either side of her, each holding her hands. 

_He loves her,_ she thought, but the thinking it did not hurt the way it should have. _He loves her and we are bound all the tighter by it._

He presses his lips to her forehead and Edith leans her head against his chest. Her other hand twists to thread more tightly with Lucille’s own. 

The jar of poison begins gathering dust. No one wipes it clean. Edith remarks how sweet her tea has become. 

The fever leaves her stranger than before, touched almost. She laughs at odd moments. Sometimes, she seems to see apparitions in the dust and shadows of the house. 

Once, during dinner, she looks past Thomas to the deserted hallway beyond the dining hall and says out loud,

“You’re trying to scare me.”

“Edith?” Thomas looks over his shoulder, but sees nothing. 

“We must accept each other’s presence,” says Edith, “as ladies of the house.” Blue eyes slide to Lucille, who watches with as much concern as Thomas. Edith looks back at the empty hall. “Go back to bed and nurse your leg.”

But she doesn’t sleepwalk anymore.

 

It is another evening, after dinner. They sit in the library as is their custom -- Edith writing in the large leather journal that had been a wedding present from Thomas ( _“Because your hand is so lovely, no matter what the publishers say,”),_ Thomas lost in a book, Lucille at the piano. 

The thought comes to her, floating with the music through her brain. She ends the piece and looks up at the girl seated beside her brother. 

“Do you sing, Edith?”

She looks regretful.

“I can barely carry a tune. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t believe that,” Lucille says. “Do you, Thomas?” 

Thomas smiles, putting aside his book. 

“I believe that whatever you do is beautiful, darling.”

“You should sing us something,” Lucille says. “I’ll play for you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what I would sing...”

“What about a lullaby?” she suggests. “I’m sure we’d all sleep the sounder for hearing you sing.”

Thomas gives Lucille a look, but she doesn’t notice. Her eyes are fixed on Edith, who scans the room and finally relents. Her dinner gown swishes as she rises and goes to the piano. Small hands rest on its shiny wood. 

“Um. Alright.” She takes another glance at the two siblings. Lucille lays her fingers on the keys, ready to play. She can pick out notes as easily as one might select a flower for a buttonhole. “This is something my mother used to sing to me. When I was little.” Edith parts her lips and begins.

_“The willow trees bend, the willow trees rock._

_My rosebud, my lilac,_

_the birds they’ll all flock_

_to crown your sweet head_

_with snow drops and ivy_

_and sing you to sleep_

_with a song so lively.”_

Her voice is not as bad as she’d made out -- merely a little flat. Within the first few lines, Lucille finds the key and begins improvising in her usual manner, with twisting notes that ascend and descend like staircases. Edith falls silent but allows Lucille to continue playing. When she slows the progression of notes, Edith begins again. 

_“The willow trees rock, the willow trees shake._

_My tulip, my wild thorn,_

_we’ll sail on a lake_

_that shimmers with light_

_and fish scales and stars_

_and I’ll send you sweet dreams_

_and a kiss from afar.”_

“That’s all, I’m afraid,” said Edith after the piano has drifted on its own for a while. “I don’t remember the rest.” She looks a little sad, and Lucille wonders if she is remembering her dead mother. Perhaps she is imagining her sitting there in the library with them, applauding her.

Thomas rises, clearly intending to go to her and embrace her, but it is Lucille who takes her hand instead. Presses it to her lips, her eyes closed. When she opens them, she sees Edith gazing at her in a mix of surprise and anticipation. Thomas watches, his expression curious and perhaps a little hurt. Lucille stands, her cobalt gown sweeping across the dusty carpet. Edith’s blonde locks slide around her hands like ribbons of silk as she cradles her head and kisses her softly. Another kiss to the point beneath her chin. She looks up at Thomas over her shoulder -- Edith’s lips have found the vein of her neck -- and sees his deference. But there is desire too, flashing in his blue eyes. Very slightly, she nods. Edith looks back at her husband, clearly anticipating his judgement. 

“Thomas,” she begins. But Thomas merely comes forward and envelops her in a long, hungry, desperate kiss. It reminds Lucille of that day in the kitchen with Edith. It reminds her of that evening in the attic so many years before, when she and Thomas had first allowed their feelings to run over into action. Did he kiss Edith like this, on that evening in the village? They are beautiful, lustful creatures, caressing each other in the golden glow of the fire. Thomas will end on his knees should they go on. She can see it. The thought sends a surprising rush of heat into her belly.

 She does not know if she should remain, if it is her right to watch them. But then Thomas raises his head, his eyes dark with his want. 

“Lucille.”

Both women know that tone and everything that comes with it. Edith is apprehensive but does not seem terribly shocked when Lucille brings her own lips to Thomas’. Behind her, she feels Edith take her hand. 

“I love you,” she murmurs. It does not matter who she means it for -- they may both treat it as their own.

The bedrooms are too cold, so they remain in the library. The layers come away, hair tumbles loose. Edith lets her lips fly from one person to the other, as if they are not separate, but a single entity. Theirs is not a confused tangle -- they seem to dance with each other, the steps of which only they know. 

Thomas rises and retrieves a heavy blanket from the chaise and drapes it over them, then slides beneath himself, beside Lucille. She hums at the warm press of his chest against her back. On her other side, Edith nestles close to her, sighs, and one arm crosses over her so she can link hands with her husband. Sighing again, she leans her head against’ Lucille’s. Their kiss is deep and long, Thomas gazing at them with something tender in his eyes. They are a knot of three ribbons -- silk, satin, and velvet. The firelight bathes everything in gold and red. As Edith climbs over her, her lips running over her lips, her eyelids, and as her hands drift over her hipbones and her thighs, the house breathes. The hearth seems to burst into flame as the fire swells and illuminates Edith. Her hair is brilliant yellow, her sweat-covered limbs gleam like the shine of new money, and Lucille cannot look away. She burns, bathed in light as the house groans, and that light draws in Lucille too. Edith pulls her from the shadows. They burn and as Thomas kisses Lucille’s spine, he too is engulfed. 

Sounds echo from above -- high whistles and a distant moaning like the wind -- but no one marks them. 

There are no songs, no lullabies. There is no need for them. As the embers die in the grate later that night, Lucille lies beneath the blanket. Her two loves curl against her in sleep, and she feels no division and no conflict. They are one and she knows there is no chance of loneliness or neglect or darkness again. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as andtheansweris42 if you'd care to follow or chat! Also, if you're wondering about the lullaby, it's an original. I didn't have the patience to scout out Victorian lullabies.


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